Hotels Grapple With Racial Bias

A hotel clerk calls a black guest a “monkey.” A white guest asks a black woman and her daughter if they bathed before swimming in the hotel pool. Elaine Glusac reports on incidents of racial bias like these that African Americans encounter while traveling. While employee training in diversity is common in the hospitality industry, Professor Bjorn Hanson notes that there has not been “a new wave of sensitivity or messaging” in the wake of social media reports of incidents reported at #TravelingWhileBlack as there was after the Starbucks incident in the spring. Candacy Taylor, who is documenting the sites listed in the Green Book, the guide to places that welcomed African Americans, remarked, “We’ve got to get to a deeper level where black people feel safe as Americans like everyone else, which is what the ‘Green Book’ was trying to do.” Read Glusac’s article by clicking here.